


Incomplete Scenes of Scully with a Baby

by melforbes



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 17:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14049171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: A compilation of scenes from a multichapter fic that never came to fruition.





	1. Crying, Unremarkable House

**Author's Note:**

> Last summer, I wrote somewhere around 40,000 words of a specfic for season 11, and for a myriad of not-great reasons, I gave up on it around September, and it never received the ending or editing that I'd hoped it would. It's something close to my heart because of the months of work I put into it, and it feels uncomfortable and odd to keep it stored away to be eventually forgotten. Of course, not every fic is going to be worth reading, and many of these scenes, altogether irrelevant from the larger plot, are testaments to that, but I wanted to share these in light of the show's finale and the rumors surrounding that finale. I loved writing this and see this moment as being the last in which any of this could be read by anyone, so I've pieced together these scenes in hope that others will read them and feel the same joy that I did while writing them. 
> 
> The actual fic itself was plotted around the contagion that was Dallas'd away in the first episode of the season, Mulder and Scully's pursuit of William prompting the two of them to try to save the whole country. The failure of this fic seems deeply obvious in retrospect. In an attempt to bring closure to the matter of Scully's ova, I wanted to bring back the Emily plot, and as a result, Scully ended up being forced to care for a baby who she would later find was immune to the contagion because of her gametic history. At first, Scully tries to find other care for the child, but she eventually comes to love the child and keep her until Mulder realizes through the child's immunity that there could be something mysterious at play. In the beginning of the fic, Mulder and Scully find William in Dubois, Wyoming, and he ends up returning home with them because his parents did not survive the contagion. Because of the apocalyptic nature of the contagion, I assumed that things such as electricity and radio signals would be rare. Other context is given with each scene.

Out here in the Virginia woods, the world was silent save for the rain, and she shielded the baby from the trickle as she walked up the porch-stairs, her key still fitting so comfortably into the lock. Though Mulder and Will could manage without heat or electricity for tonight, she needed their gas- and wood-stoves, so as she stepped into the uncomfortably familiar house, she clicked on every light she could, gauged their current power. At least living so far from a city meant that they could manage easily on their own.

Softly, anxiously, she set the girl on the couch, went back out to the car for all the supplies she could carry, and as she returned to the porch, the rain began to fall harder and harder, so she grimaced, feared for thunder, remembered how Will used to cry endlessly during storms. Back then, she used to sit up in bed and cradle him, keep him close to her warmth, soothe him with her voice for hours on end, the next morning be damned, and as she watched the little wriggling bundle on the couch, she felt tears spring to her eyes, the situation so familiar yet unfamiliar. Again, she was alone with a baby, just the two of them with an empty house to keep them company. She wondered if she could ever learn to share a child.

But this baby was temporary. Tomorrow, she would find someone, maybe a survivor who'd lost a child, and she would ask them to take care of this little girl. She absolutely couldn't manage a baby herself, and given her age, her body, she couldn't be the mother this child needed. Swallowing hard as she managed to set up a bassinet, she realized what a recurring theme that was.

The night coming, the rain pounding, she brought the girl upstairs and into the bedroom, where she set the baby down on the bed she'd made so many calmer nights ago, and while she dragged the bassinet upstairs, she thought of her boys in the city, wondered if they were warm, hoped she had enough food in the pantry for them to manage but knew with disdain that she hadn't much more than some frozen chicken breasts and a bag of spinach. Luckily, the house was stocked with plenty, and as she carried the baby back downstairs, left the little girl on the couch again while she fixed a bottle for the child, she knew they would both be warm and well-fed for the night. The microwave remaining powerless, she heated the bottle on the stove, the practice awkward and old, a backup from when Monica would take care of Will for her afternoons spent alone. Swallowing awkwardly, she wondered if Monica was among the survivors.

Back then, her motherhood had felt like a fluke, like some practical joke played upon her, like the reason why every child is told to be careful of what they wish for. Of course, she'd been granted the most wonderful opportunity, but she could remember nursing her son as she cried, thoughts of his father plaguing her mind, and she remembered the way it felt to watch William move the mobile with his mind, and she remembered all the different sobs he had - when he needed a change, when he was hungry, when he simply missed the feeling of her bare skin against his - and how hard it had been to differentiate them at first. However, she'd had her pregnancy, her horribly swollen breasts, the bodily trauma to prove that this child was purely hers, that she'd given birth to her son. However, she still felt a degree of detachment from her son, and that detachment had been what made her realize that no bodily changes or grand traumas would ever make her a mother, not so much as doing the hardest thing she could imagine in order to promise his safety would.

Maybe she was a mother. As she situated herself on the couch, the baby in her arms and a warm bottle - she'd tested the formula against her wrist - in hand, she thought of how these little skills felt like long-lost memories, like hearing an old song and forgetting its lyrics but still knowing how to dance to it. Though the little girl had been so quiet all day, hadn't fussed at the abandoned Target and hadn't cried throughout the drive, she shook her head away from the bottle, swatted her tiny fists at Scully's arm in disdain.

Huffing, Scully said softly, "I know, I know. It's not what you want."

The girl let out a little cry, and instinctively, Scully held her closer, stared down at her in askance. _You need this, my baby. I know you're hungry. Are you ever going to cry for me? God, I once wished William would just_ stop _crying, but I get it now. I get it._

"You haven't eaten in hours," Scully insisted, tried not to make judgements about her empty house, her temporary child, and her mindless jabbering. "It's nice and warm, sweetheart. Just have a little bit, okay?"

With a clash of thunder, she jolted, forced her gaze to the kitchen's window, and surely enough, a flash of lightning came, so she took a deep breath, remembered where all of the crank-flashlights were, thanked the Lord that they had enough to survive for days out here even without power. The candles in the kitchen flickered, and as she looked back down at the girl, she saw in the baby's candlelit face in awe toward those windows. Softly, Scully smiled.

"Do you like that?" Scully asked. "The rain?"

The baby hiccuped, and she felt her heart clench.

"My son used to hate the rain," she said, a quiet smile on her lips. "He would cry and cry and cry about it. Sometimes, it would make me cry too."

Glancing back to the window, Scully decided to stand up, the baby still cradled in her arms, the bottle at the ready.

"Would you like to see it?" she asked as she carried the child to the window. "It's relaxing, you know? So many people find it too loud, too scary, but I find it comforting."

Standing in front of the window, she looked out at the field beyond them, at the vegetable garden that Mulder had only recently begun to till again, at the trees that lined this far-out property and bordered their perfect kingdom of a homeland. When they'd bought the house, she'd liked that its distance from others made her feel as though she were on another planet, and now, she found that being in a place that didn't feel plagued with illness and terror was the most soothing place to be. The rain pounded on the roof, wind rucking up the furniture on the porch, and as she stared out at the rustling and damp grasses, she wondered what their little world would look like in the morning. _Lush,_  she figured. _Like spring._

When the baby fussed, Scully jolted from her thoughts, stared down at the girl as the baby reached for the bottle, and with a breathless smile, Scully brought the bottle to the child's lips, watched as she started to suckle on it.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you."


	2. Bathtime, Unremarkable House

Scully had never been so thankful for a battery-powered stereo as she was while the little girl sat in the water-filled sink, her tiny tufts of hair soapily sticking up, the biggest of smiles on her lips while "Don't Be Cruel" played off one of Mulder's old tapes. The girl didn't like silence, something rural Virginia supplied in excess, and the stereo seemed to be the only thing making this quiet-turned-rowdy girl calm. As Scully poured water softly over the baby, covered her eyes with a palm the size of the girl's whole head, the child laughed, Scully's face crinkling with a smile. The giggles, the baby scent, the cool, wet night outside, it all made her feel so at ease that she began to forget the bodies in the city, the blood cultures in the hospital. She'd missed this kind of intoxication.

A little hooded pink elephant towel at the ready, Scully managed the old technique she used to use to get Will out of the bath alone, scooped the baby up against her own bare chest while wrapping the girl in the towel, keeping the baby warm against her skin. Back when Will had somehow soaked most all of her shirts during bathtime, she'd learned that a nursing bra was the absolute most she could wear unless she wanted to do laundry every day, so she'd stripped from the day's clothes, put on a pair of clean pajama pants she'd left here a few weeks ago, and stayed bare on top. With a smiling baby against her chest, the bareness somehow felt completely natural.

Looking down at the little girl's eyes, Scully smiled at the baby, stared in awe at her little blue eyes, the tufts of light hair on her head; softly, she kissed the girl's forehead, took in her scent, stroked her little terryclothed back, and after letting the sink drain, she headed into Mulder's office, the temporary location for all of the baby's supplies. Though the room was ideal given that it held the most unoccupied space in the house, she liked even more the symbolism of using his desk as a makeshift changing table.

Once she'd wriggled the baby into a pink cotton onesie - though Scully had never much cared for the gendered clothing, there was something about those soft, light baby colors that still made her heart swell - she took the girl upstairs, the baby's eyes starting to close, night coming slowly and coolly over the house. Eying the conspicuous bassinet in the bedroom, Scully bit her lip, then looked back down at the baby while she tried to remember every parenting book she'd ever read. If the baby could sleep on her own, then the best place for her was the bassinet, especially so that Scully could get some sleep; however, the thought of putting the girl down made her heart clench, so she figured that just ten more minutes, however long it would take until the child fell asleep, would be okay. She could hold the baby for just ten more minutes, couldn't she? Ten more minutes wouldn't do any harm.

However, she'd begun to chill, so she set the girl softly on the bed, pulled her pajama-shirt on before crawling beneath the covers beside the baby. Sitting up, she took the baby back into her arms, the sensation of holding the girl sorely missed despite the shortness of the break, and as Scully stared down at the girl, all fed and bathed and ready for bed, she sighed with relief. She could do this, could care for this little girl, could be her surrogate for the time being, could keep her alive and healthy and safe in this uncouth world. That was a parent's job, wasn't it, to show grace and love in the face of such dire circumstances? Softly, she held the girl closer, tried not to think of giving her up tomorrow.

Gently, she ran a finger down the girl's nose, the motion the same as the one she'd used to help Will close his eyes. Outside, trees swayed softly in the breeze, and she wished she could freeze this moment, take a snapshot of the memory and come back to this feeling whenever she felt scared and lost. However, she'd learned since William's birth, since her separation from Mulder, that what she felt and with whom she felt were two incredibly temporary things, both as fleeting as they were beautiful, both as meaningful as they were unremarkable. When she felt so serene, she always tried to remember that bad times would come and exhaust her love for this moment, but that way of thinking was so painful, a sense that good things only numbed the bad. Months ago, before she and Mulder rekindled things over one of his homecooked meals and a few case files they'd ignored as though it were the old days again, she'd heard her therapist talk about how she never fully lived in her moments, only thought of them as something to savor and desperately clutch onto, so now, she decided to let this moment be what it would be, a wonderful moment holding a baby girl, a chance to care altruistically for someone whose love was so soft and comforting. Tomorrow, this bubble would burst, but for now, she chose not to think about that. For now, she simply held the girl and waited for her to sleep.

Once the baby shut her eyes, her breaths coming so softly, Scullycoaxed the girl into the bassinet, eased the baby down. Hesitantly, Scully stood before her, then leaned down to kiss the girl's forehead again. Standing, she moved back to the bed and waited on a feed that would inevitably come in a few hours.

The rain had calmed, and as Scully drifted to sleep, she found she didn't mind the prospect of waking up so soon.


	3. Feeding (Incomplete)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ends in the middle of a sentence because this is my compilation of unfinished fic and I do what I please.

Only moments before the baby began to cry, Scully woke, soft moonlight shining through the bedroom's windows, the night cool and comfortable. As the girl began to cry, Scully slid out of the sheets, scooped the baby into her arms while cooing whispers of _it's alright_  and _I'm right here,_  the little girl fussy against her chest as she carried the baby downstairs. The kitchen, starlit through the windows, was just bright enough that Scully could find the long-handled lighter for the candles, so she lit two near the stove, shifted the baby onto one shoulder - she grimaced while the child wailed into her ear - so that she could start a pot on the stove. Back when Will had been this little, all she'd had to do was sit up in bed, yank her probably wet pajama shirt down, and get him to latch, but now, she felt minutes pass agonizingly as she tried to watch the stove, soothe the baby, and figure out how to change her in the dark.

As she went about the every-few-hours routine, she thought of Mulder and Will, her boys in the city sleeping through all of this, and back when they'd all been so fleetingly together, she'd woken to the sounds of Will's cries, and though her body had ached, and though the thought of moving at all made her grimace, she hadn't needed to express anything to Mulder in order for him to crawl out of bed and hoist Will onto the changing table, all the while insisting that she close her eyes for just a little while longer. Of course, she hadn't closed her eyes at all because she'd been so flabbergasted at the sheer idea of Mulder knowing how to change a diaper, and by the time he'd brought Will over to her, she'd held such an incredulous look that all he could do was smile.

It had been odd to breastfeed in front of someone else. Though she'd done so in the hospital, she'd only done so in front of nurses or doctors, never family or friends; while the exposure didn't bother her, the intimacy made her wince. What other act was as terrifyingly human as nursing was? If she were to share that experience with any human being beyond her children, she knew that such a person would be so deeply connected to her that such a thing didn't feel like a violation. While Mulder had sat alongside her, his hand resting softly at her side, she'd felt watched but never judged, the act as natural as her culture wished her to think it wasn't.

He'd kissed the side of her face softly, sloppily, for the sake of it and for no other reason. That, she figured, was the best kind of love.

Finally, the bottle was warm, the girl's diaper fresh, and Scully returned to the bedroom, stood tiredly by the moonlit window as the baby suckled. Back when she'd breastfed Will, she'd found the process awkward and tiresome, but now, as she stared out at the dark field ahead, she wondered what it would be like to not have to warm formula and to just bring the baby to her breast instead. A few months ago, she read a study on relactation, on hormonal therapies and basic suction


	4. Contact, WGAT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For context, Scully stole an ancient station wagon because her current car had been a borrowed truck, and she thought that a baby was unfit for a truck, so she found the first pair of practical keys in a dead person's possession and went with that car instead. As has been mentioned, this was fairly post-apocalyptic in content, so radio transmissions had not been heard in the fic until this moment. The maritime flag mention is clunky and poorly done because this received minimal editing. The Dubois plot was about how Mulder and Scully found William in Dubois, Wyoming.

Though she didn't like the lead-foot gas pedal or the squeaky breaks on the station wagon, she had to admit that the size of it was so much more manageable than her overcompensating Ford had been, and the thought of taking that SUV again made her cringe, but nonetheless, she liked the safety she felt in that newer car, especially now that she kept glancing toward the backseat at the little girl, who seemed to be lulled to sleep each time they were in the car together. Already, she could see patterns in the baby, how she liked to feed near windows and how a moment or two on the porch could quiet her when nothing else seemed able to, and she'd found such terrifying ease in jotting each notion down, in scheduling timed feeds off of her old running watch, in dressing the little girl in clothes like the ones she so contentedly picked out during her pregnancy. Because the rain was still heavy, the day cooler than most of summer, she'd dressed the girl in a warmer onesie, this one tan and hooded with cloth ears that made her look like a bear. Because the girl wouldn't let go of Scully's hand, she'd forced a little blanket between her fingers, this one covered in giraffes. She'd forgotten just how much she loved baby clothes.

The route to the hospital, though achingly familiar, was tinged with the sense that, the last time she took such a route, her mother - as well as most of the country - had been alive, and she and Mulder had been in the process of separating, a process he'd been almost completely unaware of. Back then, she would spend these rural-to-urban drives thinking it over, imagining the inevitable day when she would do what her therapist encouraged and finally put her foot down, insisting that they both deserved better than what they had, but in the end, those imaginings, all punctuated with long conversations and finished with renewed love for each other, had been far-cry fantasies from how, after she'd found an apartment close to the hospital, she'd up and left. She couldn't even break them up right. Sometimes, it felt as though every decision she made were some kind of mistake intended to keep her from being hurt but, in the end, only caused her to hurt more.

Glancing back at the baby, she caught the girl still sleeping, then turned back to the road. At the hospital, she could find someone, anyone, a healing woman more capable - and, at best, producing milk - of raising this child, and though the thought made her heart turn, she had two children already who'd proven that she was unfit to be a mother, especially given her circumstances now. Though she could care for this baby overnight, she would never be her mother, so she would find someone else, someone worthy, someone _healthy,_  and from there, she would go back to her new life, one with a son and Mulder and blood cultures that could save so many. Her life had no room for a baby.

Making a familiar turn toward what would be an empty highway, she heard a hiss, but when she looked back at the baby, the child was fine, so she stilled, slowed the car, remembered her gun on the passenger's seat and the crowbar in the back, and as her heart began to race, even more hisses came through from somewhere in the car, somewhere she couldn't identify. Out on these roads, she was all alone, and if someone had followed her, had climbed into her car and trailed her, then she wouldn't make it out alive. She couldn't fight like this, not in front of the child, not while _protecting_  the child, not while so much was at stake. Who would create the vaccine if she didn't? She needed to be alive, and she needed the baby to be alive, and she didn't trust herself to prioritize one over the other.

Then, the hiss came again, and suddenly, she realized it wasn't a hiss but was static, a microphone's buzz coming through the radio, so quickly, she turned up the radio's volume, waited anxiously for more noise. Was it Morse code? The FM station was in the basic 100s, probably originally a pop channel she never listened to, but as more static came, she felt her anxieties turn to hope, her fears quiet; someone was out there, someone who could at least try to communicate with her.

When a voice came through, Scully felt tears spring to her eyes.

"This is Brian G broadcasting through WGAT - we _gat_  the music you want to hear, you know the phrase - broadcasting on 102.1 megahertz," a sad but satisfied voice said, "and I just got this fucking mic to work."

With a watery laugh, Scully drove on, the way so familiar, this man's old and gravelly voice on the radio making her feel suddenly so at ease. He didn't have the sick hack of her patients, held a disdain not from his own illness but from that of others. Somehow, he too was immune.

"I am located within the WGAT studios and have been here since the...well, you know what happened," the man said steadily, "and only now have we - I - managed to get the power back on and bring back the broadcast. If the FCC fines us for dead air, I'm gonna be pissed."

 _They'll have to fine you for those two swears as well,_  Scully thought. When she glanced back at the baby, she blinked away tears to find the girl's eyes open in awe.

"I have to report four deaths," he said, and Scully tensed. "Martha Albright, who you may remember from the morning slot, passed two days ago. Tim Cummings passed last night, along with Elaine Cummings and Jessica Cummings, a family well-loved here at WGAT. If you are family of these individuals, please contact me at this station. Their bodies...they've been buried respectfully."

Scully took a deep breath.

"Now, I don't know who's listening, or if anyone's out there to listen, but I'd like to make a few things clear," the man said. "Bravo, Hotel, Kilo, Mike, Quebec. I have my flags hung high."

 _Bravo, Hotel, Kilo, Mike, Quebec._  The phonetic alphabet. A B, an H, a K, an M, and a Q. What could that mean? That wasn't another radio call sign unless he'd listed the letters in the incorrect order. Was that an address, a call to action, the initials of someone for whom he was searching? She tried to remember the rest of the phonetic alphabet, recalled her father teaching her all sorts of Navy codes-

_Maritime flags!_

Quickly, she slowed the car, pulled it into reverse, and turned back toward the house, where she knew she kept an old guide of maritime flags. She knew that _Hotel_  meant he had a pilot on board, could remember that _Kilo_  held a wish for communication amongst vessels, but what did those hold for this context? Either way, Brian G wanted her to let him know she was listening.

"Last, but not least, I'm gonna need to bring us back to the music," the man said while Scully sped toward the house. "This song goes out to all of you who can hear it. And to those of you who can't, I play something sad in an hour. But for now, here's the anthem of the new world. Godspeed."

And when the song came on, Scully laughed through tears, turned the volume up as loud as she knew the baby's ears could handle, gripped the steering wheel as she drove the abandoned local routes, stark houses lining her way, morning sunshine coming through her windows.

_It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!_

* * *

Quebec in the maritime flag system's alphabet meant that the given vessel was free of contagious disease, so this Brian from WGAT wasn't sick. As Scully drove, she tried to think of immunity, of alien DNA and spontaneous repopulation, but how had the immune been selected exactly? Why would a disk jockey have immunity when Mulder didn't? Of course, she knew _Hotel_  and _Kilo,_  so Brian must be a pilot who wanted to communicate. The message made sense, especially _Mike_ , that he was stopped and not moving. However, the _Bravo_  unnerved her, for that element meant that he had dangerous goods with him, and she had a baby and a hospital full of people to think about.

As she pulled into the little house that held WGAT's studios, the place out in the country and broadcasting to Alexandria and D.C., she saw three cars in the little lot, a pickup like Will's and two sedans; the grasses in the lot were matted, and based on the pollen accumulation on the sedans, no one had driven them recently. Inside, there were lights on in the little house, a white one-floor with chipping paint and signs signaling the station's call letters and broadcasting range, and as she got out of the car, she wondered what would be inside this place, who exactly this Brian character was. However, he seemed safe, had been cautious enough to send his message through code, had sworn at the FCC in ways a dangerous person would've at least avoided. Nonetheless, she kept her gun holstered and her badge at-the-ready.

Then, there was the baby. She needed to bring the baby in. Uncomfortably, she lifted the girl's car seat out of the station wagon, tried to think of every way she could still get to her gun given this position. Though the girl was sleeping, Scully knew how things could go awry with babies, so when she made her way to the front door of WGAT, the rain casting a deep mist around her, she prayed for the best.

With two knocks, she made her presence known, and after a long pause, the front door opened, a tall, older man standing in front of her, his Buffalo Bills tee shirt smelling of Febreze and cheap detergent, his white Nikes like the ones Mulder wore when they first met. This man had a soft face, seemed like an older father who'd watched with pride as all of his children graduated college, the kind of guy who mowed lawns and fixed leaks in kitchen sinks and made his own hardwood furniture. Though he wore hefty frames, she could still tell that one of his eyes was glass.

Then, the man smiled.

"So someone did hear me," he said with pride, relief, thankfulness. Then, he held out a hand to shake. "I'm Brian. Brian Goodfellow. Horrible name, I know."

Cautiously, Scully held her own hand out.

"Dana Scully," she said.

They shook.

"Come on in," he said, motioning toward the station.

As she came into the station, she found the place to have a kind climate, less humid than the house had been; the entrance was carpeted, a staircase toward an attic in front of her and a little kitchen just beyond the staircase. To her left, a heavy door labeled with _STUDIO_  and an automated _ON AIR_  lit sign stood, and Brian led her to the right, where a large room was set up like a living room, only the walls were covered in more CDs and records than she could count, all of them organized in certain patterns. A few couches were in this room, likely a reprieve for those who needed a few minutes off-air, and on one couch, a sheet, a few blankets, and a pillow made up what must have been Brian's bed. To Scully's surprise, the whole place had electricity.

"Welcome to WGAT, Dana Scully," he said with a hint of pride. "Would you like anything? Coffee, tea?"

Coffee sounded heavenly, but she shook her head.

"Well, then." He motioned for her to come into the living room. "Sit down, make yourself at home."

She edged toward an orange armchair, set the baby's car seat down in front of her before she sat. When she next looked to Brian, she saw him smiling at the baby, so involuntarily, Scully smiled too.

"How old is she?" Brian asked.

"Four weeks," Scully said all-too-comfortably.

"What's her name?"

Before she'd known William's gender, she'd had two names picked out, one for a boy and another for a girl. She'd never gone through long lists of names or books offering inspiration, had had her names picked out as soon as she'd allowed herself to think about the topic.

"Sarah," she said as she looked down at the baby.

"Pretty," Brian said. "Hebrew, right? You Jewish?"

Scully shook her head, said, "Catholic."

"Damn," Brian said, shaking his head. "My friend, he worked here with me, and he just died, and he was Jewish. Family has to sit for a week, right? I don't know much about it, but I know that the family is supposed to do something. Problem is, I don't know where his family is, so I just buried the body out back. I feel like I owe him more, but I don't know what to do."

Gently, Scully rocked the baby's car seat.

"If I can find anything out about it, I'll tell you," she said, unsure of what else to say.

"I'm really glad you got my message," he said from his chair. "Were you in the Navy?"

Quickly, she shook her head, then qualified, "My father was."

"So you knew the code."

"To an extent, yes," she said. "I had to drive back home and look them up, but yeah, I knew."

"Either way, there's no contagion here," he said. "At least, none that I know of. I...everyone but me is dead, so I'm not sure there's much else that the contagion _can_  do."

Awkwardly, she shifted in her chair.

"But you never got sick," Brian noticed.

Scully raised an eyebrow.

"How did you know that?" she asked.

"I've seen this before, that's how," Brian said, then pointed to his collarbone. "The infected get two little bumps right here, bumps that don't really go away. You don't have the bumps."

Come to think of it, she knew of those bumps but had never connected them to the illness. Was there really that common and simple a marker? She would need to check Mulder.

"Where have you seen this before?" she asked.

"I...it's complicated," Brian said. "Are there any others like us? I mean, I'm assuming you've got a boyfriend."

"A boyfriend?"

Brian shrugged.

"No ring and a baby. Most logical conclusion, I guess. Could be wrong."

"There are others," she clarified. "Some others." But she'd yet to meet anyone other than herself, William, and the baby who'd survived for reasons she'd yet to determine. Why would a radio DJ have survived?

"What have you been doing since this happened?" he asked.

Foregoing an explanation of Dubois, she gave, "I'm a doctor, and I've been working on developing a vaccine against the outbreak."

His eyes widened with a sense of glee. "You're a doctor?"

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"That's...I'm surprised," he said. "Did the rest of your family fall to the contagion?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're fine, Sarah's fine, but what about your siblings, your parents?"

Swallowing awkwardly, Scully said, "My parents passed away before the contagion, and my siblings are unreachable."

"So it wasn't a Navy family thing."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's a reason we're both immune to this," Brian said with conviction. "I was a naval pilot, and we were immunized. I just...I'm sorry, you seem like a good person and all, but I don't see how some doctor gets immune to this kind of thing."

"I'm...I'm also with the government."

That piqued Brian's interest.

"Oh?"

Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out her badge, showed him her credentials.

"Federal Bureau of Investigation," he sounded out as he nodded to her. "You've got style, Dana."

Pocketing her badge, she said, "But plenty of my colleagues fell ill. My...my partner fell ill, as did two of our close colleagues."

"Yeah, and not all of us Navy guys were immune back in the day," Brian gave. "That was the whole point."

"What do you mean?"

Brian weighed his words, then smugly smiled.

"Lady doctor, lady agent, I bet you've seen some discrimination in your time," he said.

"Unfortunately," she gave.

"Well, if you want a boy out of the Navy though he's good enough to be in the Navy, then there's one way to get rid of him," Brian explained, "and that's to say he was lost in some way. Sometimes, they look for the body, and sometimes, they don't."

"I don't think I'm following you."

Brian thought for a moment, then asked, "What does the government do when those with power are no longer under the government's control?"

Scully swallowed hard.

"The government punishes those with power," she said.

"And ultimately?"

"They kill the rebellion."

"And it's easy to kill the rebellion when you infect everybody but keep the benign soldiers immune."

" _God_..."

"Many years ago, I was on an aircraft carrier where they spread the contagion," Brian said, nodding. "People died in this same way, everything going as it did here."

"But how were you immunized?" she asked.

He shrugged, said, "Some of us just were. We weren't asked to question it."

"But a vaccine exists."

"It did once, but I don't know its composition or where to find it," Brian said, grimacing. "I...I think I speak for the both of us when I say that I'm feeling a little helpless here, Dana."

Softly, she smiled, then looked down at the little girl, now stirred from sleep. As Brian looked down at the little girl, he smiled too, and she liked that, how babies brought people together, how they softened the mood of a room.

"Is she your first?" he asked, shifting the mood.

Outside of the window behind him, it had begun to rain, the downpour turning the outdoors into a haze. Awkwardly, she shook her head.

"I have a son," she said quietly.

"How old is he?"

How easy it could be to talk like this, as though nothing had ever gone awry.

"He's fifteen," she said.

"Oh," Brian said, wide-eyed. "Big age difference."

"Yeah," she gave.

"And your...significant other?" he asked with a wince. "Sorry, I don't know what other word to use."

"It's fine," she said with a half-laugh. "My partner and I met in the early 1990s. He's also with the Bureau."

"And you're all locals?" Brian asked. "I assume you work in Washington."

"We're near here, yes," she glossed, "but my partner and our son are staying in the city for now. I'm due back there eventually."

"Am I keeping you?"

"No, not at all," she said, gently rocking the girl once more. "Actually, this has been really meaningful to hear. I...if you could give me more details about those Naval operations, I actually might be able to find more information on it, maybe even some stuff you don't know. We have specific files for such situations at the Bureau."

"You mean like an x-file?"

She blanched, her heart hammering, her hands clenching. Trying to keep her voice even, she asked coolly, "What do you know about the x-files?"

"I have a friend who was assigned to them way-back-when," Brian said with a nod. "You guys might've crossed paths, given the timeframe. His name's-"

"John Doggett," she said, her voice far-out.

"Yeah," Brian said, nodding. "He told me a little about the work. Of course, I mentioned some stuff, and though he said he'd look into it, I'm not sure he ever really found something. Or, rather, if he'd found something, it hadn't been worthwhile enough to mention to me."

When she'd asked about Doggett, her superiors had shaken their heads, all saying that he left the Bureau sometime around 2006 and hadn't been heard from since. Though there were rumors of his whereabouts, Doggett had never been frivolous enough for rumors to truly spread about him.

"We worked together," Scully said, "while I was pregnant with my son. My partner and I had worked the x-files in the previous years. Doggett came in and surprised me with his competence. He was...he _is_  a good man and a damn good agent."

"Secretive, though," Brian gave. "He has me get mail for him here sometimes, usually packages. I'm not supposed to open them, so I don't."

She stilled.

"So he's local?" she asked with surprise.

Brian nodded, said, "Lives way out in the country, very isolated. He said he's trying to keep a low-profile but stay connected to certain folks."

"To what?"

Brian shrugged uncomfortably.

"It didn't seem like a good idea to ask."

"And you never saw return addresses on these packages?" she asked. "No postage marks? No-"

"They were all bare and unmarked," Brian gave. "Sometimes, I almost lost them because they were so plain."

"Have you heard from him recently?"

"You mean since the contagion?"

"Yes."

"I haven't, but I haven't made an effort to find him either," Brian said. "I can write down his address, if you'd like."

In her carrier, the baby started to fuss, kicking her little legs around. Looking down at the girl, Brian smiled, said, "I remember when my girls were that age. Now, they're all grown. I'm not sure I have to say this to you, but value what you have while it lasts."

Softly, Scully smiled back.

"I would appreciate the address," she said, "as well as any information you can provide on your experiences in the Navy."

"Certainly."

Brian stood, then said, "I have a pen and paper in the studio. If you need to feed her, I'll make myself scarce, write down what you need. I might as well be putting my verbal flags up again anyway."

Furrowing her brow, Scully asked, "Have you been broadcasting this whole time?"

Brian grimaced, gave, "More or less. Our computer system is shot, so automation is down, but I figured that putting on a vinyl record would buy me some time once I heard your knock. Everyone likes Fleetwood Mac, right?"

She sucked her lips into a smile, nodded once.

"Well, I'll get you that information and be back with it in a while," he said, heading toward the studio. "The kitchen's stocked, so if you need anything for the road, feel free to grab it."

"Okay."

And then, Brian was gone, and as the baby started to cry, Scully thankfully had a chance to take her mind off of the navy, Doggett, and all of the other parts of this that hurt and confused her. For now, she had a secular focus, and she relished in its grace.


	5. Three Little Scullys, Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is, more or less, where things ended. The Emily plot returns for some more fun. For the time, Mulder and William were staying on a cot in Scully's office at the Our Lady of Sorrows hospital.

And Mulder watched as Scully shifted the baby in her arms, as she burped the child while Will napped on the cot they shared, and for a moment, he imagined the four of them at the house, Will detailing his day at school, Scully multitasking by putting dinner leftovers into Tupperware and still holding the baby, Mulder looking on while a record played in the background. He could hear the inevitable laughter, could sense how warm and comfortable everything would be, could imagine the two of them putting the baby to bed as Will finished his homework for the night; he could imagine the three of them sitting down for a movie together, some selection that they could all manage to agree upon despite ten minutes of disputes over which DVD to pick. In the morning, he could imagine a sleepy Scully in her pajamas soothing the little girl, could picture himself and Will cooking breakfast, could imagine teaching skillet techniques and making sure the boy knew that Scully liked her eggs over-easy. He could imagine kissing Scully's cheek while the baby lay in her arms. He could imagine holding the little girl and feeling his world grow so wonderfully small.

The thing about loss, he found, was that it was in some small ways a gift, for without loss, he would've never known what to miss. Of course, he wasn't thankful for his sister's abduction, and he still despised the contagion even though he'd survived it, but after Scully had left, and after his ensuing deeper depression, he'd managed to realize that, though he'd always wanted adventure and needed his work in order to feel like himself, there was so much more to life than just work. He'd taken their human connection - a rarity, he'd since found - for granted, had let their relationship go unattended, and he'd starved them both of that connection through his retreating. However, he now knew that, even if he needed some kind of adventure to make him feel alive, the best parts of living were the parts in which he felt every part of his body, as if every cell were alive, and most all of those moments - be it holding his son for the first time or seeing a spacecraft in Antarctica - were spent with Scully. It was obvious, he learned, where he needed to be.

And there was newfound adventure in the small elements, in the sound of hot butter on the cast iron skillet her mother had passed down, in the feeling of her alongside him in bed, in the way she touched her finger to her tongue before turning the page of a book. Though he may not be chasing government conspiracies, he still felt good. There was a lot to be said about feeling good.

They were being offered a second chance as a family, and now, he knew with the strongest of convictions that he needed to step up. Nighttime feeds, homework help, diaper changes, teen romances, he wanted to know about all of it, and as he stared at his little motley family, he knew he would never be able to leave them, not ever.

 _Three little Scullys,_  he thought with a breathless laugh, but then, his breath hitched. He'd seen the nursery, had seen all of the dead children, knew that no baby in this hospital had survived the contagion. In fact, most of the young children had died fairly quickly, the very old dying off first and the children going second. The more he thought, the more he realized that this baby was the first child he'd seen since the start of the contagion, so either the girl had been resilient and managed to take an infusion from Scully, or the girl had never been sick at all.

He knew the hospital logs by heart now, and of all those who had evaded the contagion, he knew only two, and those two were on the cot in front of him, one asleep and one close to nodding off with a baby in her arms.

"Scully," he said, trying to mask the terror in his voice.

Looking up at him, her eyes held innocent askance, and he cringed as he realized the horrible thoughts he would be providing her with.

"I..." he stuttered. "I think we should test her DNA."

She raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

Desperately, he tried to find words, to express what he felt, to remind her of death and corruption and harm and their horrid past, the worst parts of it, the parts they hadn't spoken of in the many years since they'd happened. He searched for a way to explain to her the one word that could've summarized this with such ease, but that one word, a little girl's name, would've shattered her, and the thought of hurting her made his stomach turn.

"Mulder," she said, her eyes going dark, "you're scaring me."

"I'm sorry," he managed, "but I..."

He shook his head, unable to speak, but then, her face turned, a desperate _no_  curling her lips, her clutch on the baby growing tighter.

"That's impossible," she dismissed, but he could see the terror in her eyes, knew she'd followed his thoughts.

"Scully, it's-"

" _No._ "

Forcibly, she stood, brought the baby over to the pop-up crib, set the girl down gently but raced from the room afterward.

"Scully!" he called after her, heading for the door.

But her _don't follow me_  message was all too clear, and he'd grown accustomed to her leaving. For now, his duties were elsewhere, and as Will stirred from sleep, Mulder knew where he needed to be, where _she_  needed him to be.

"What's going on?" Will asked groggily.

Swallowing hard, Mulder gave, "Nothing."

"She told me no secrets," Will said. "No secrets, okay?"

Mulder took a deep breath, then managed, "A long time ago, a little girl close to Scully died, and I..."

He found that he couldn't finish the sentence


End file.
